Professor Helen FultonBA(Syd), Dip Celt(Oxon), PhD(Syd)

Member of

Research interests

Helen Fulton’s main research areas are the history and politics of medieval literature, classical reception in the Middle Ages, Celtic studies, Arthurian literature, medieval urban literature, and cultural exchanges between England and Wales in the Middle Ages. She has also published on Welsh and Irish literatures of the twentieth century and on the language of the media. Helen is an active member of the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Bristol and the leader of the Faculty of Arts research cluster, 'Borders and Borderlands' (http://www.bristol.ac.uk/arts/research/collaborations/clusters/borders-borderlands.html).

Current projects include an edition of medieval Welsh political poetry, an edition of the medieval Welsh version of the Troy legend, Ystorya Dared, and a monograph on literary representations of the city in medieval British literature.

I would welcome applications from graduate students wanting to work in any of these areas: (1) medieval urban writing, including literature and history; (2) medieval historical, political and/or prophetic writing; (3) Arthurian literature of any period; (4) literature of any period relating to the Celtic countries; (5) the postmedieval or modern reception of medieval literature.

Other information

A graduate of the universities of Sydney and Oxford, Helen Fulton has held Visiting Research Fellowships at St John’s College, Oxford, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and the Institute of English Studies, University of London. She has over 70 publications, including 9 authored and edited books, and has convened 3 major international conferences as well as organising numerous sessions at international conferences in the UK and US. She has delivered more than 10 keynote addresses and many invited presentations and conference papers in the UK, US, South Africa, and Australia. She was a long-standing member of the AHRC Peer Review College, including serving as an Institutional Reviewer for the AHRC, and has extensive experience of peer reviewing for grant-awarding bodies, publishers, and REF audits.

Helen has been involved in a a number of research projects in the UK and Australia, acting as Principal Investigator on 13 funded projects (British Academy, AHRC, Australian Research Council). She recently collaborated as Co-Investigator on an AHRC-funded research project using digitization and GIS mapping (http://www.medievalchester.ac.uk/index.html) and is currently leading a GW4 team in the development of a further project, 'Sir John Prise and his Book: Constructing the Past in S-W England and the March of Wales, 1400-1600'.

Helen has extensive administrative and leadership experience. She is currently Head of the Department of English and Director of Research in the School of Humanities. Previous management roles include Head of the Department of English and Related Literature at the University of York, Head of the School of Arts at Swansea University, Pro-Dean in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Sydney, and founding Directorships of three research centres.

Helen is the editor of a refereed journal (Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion) and the Series Co-Editor of New Century Chaucer, a book series published by the University of Wales Press. She is on a number of editorial boards, including the Bristol Series in Medieval Cultures, published by Boydell and Brewer, and she chairs the Editorial Board of the University of Wales Press. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, and a Fellow and Member of Council of the Learned Society of Wales. She is a Trustee of the Historic Towns Trust and of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion.